The Michael Morton Act, a Texas law enacted after a wrongful conviction case, requires prosecutors to turn over most evidence in their possession to the defense, including information that could be favorable to the accused.
O’Connell says that the law mandates that “exculpatory mitigating evidence” must be given to the defense.
“It’s clear they didn’t turn over the evidence of why they felt they could indict the city and the city was legitimately scared about this enough that the city went out and hired their own criminal defense attorney,” O’Connell said. “So one of two things is true, either he had the evidence and he didn’t produce it to us, or he didn’t have any basis to indict the city, and he was just threatening them, and that would be official oppression anyway.”